Electronic devices are often implanted within a human or animal for acquiring biological data or for providing therapy. It is often desirable for such an implanted device to wirelessly communicate with a remote external device. For example, the implanted device may communicate the acquired biological data to the remote device for processing and/or display or other user output. In another example, the implanted device may communicate to the remote device information about how the implanted device is configured. In a further example, the external device may communicate to the implanted device instructions for performing subsequent operations. Because the implanted device is often battery-powered, there is need for the communication protocol to operate without consuming excessive energy, which would deplete the battery and, therefore, shorten the usable life of the implanted device. However, such low-power communication techniques may be particularly sensitive to environmental noise. Such noise can disrupt the data communication and can even corrupt the data being transmitted. Therefore, there is also a need for a low-power communication protocol that allows any such detected noise to be evaluated to determine whether the data being transmitted risks being corrupted.